Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle 5)

“It’s all right, Nevile. I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything.”

Thomas Royde stood by the front door, almost as though he would bar the way out.

A very faint smile came to her lips.

“‘True Thomas,’” she murmured.

He mumbled: “If there’s anything I can do—”

“No one can do anything,” said Audrey.

She went out with her head high. A police car was waiting outside with Sergeant Jones in it. Audrey and Leach got in.

Ted Latimer murmured appreciatively:

“Lovely exit!”

Nevile turned on him furiously. Superintendent Battle dexterously interposed his bulk and raised a soothing voice:

“As I said, I’ve got an experiment to make. Mr. MacWhirter is waiting down at the ferry. We’re to join him there in ten minutes’ time. We shall be going out in a motor launch, so the ladies had better wrap up warmly. In ten minutes, please.”

He might have been a stage manager ordering a company on to the stage. He took no notice at all of their puzzled face

s.

ZERO HOUR

I

It was chilly on the water and Kay hugged the little fur jacket she was wearing closer round her.

The launch chugged down the river below Gull’s Point, and then swung round into the little bay that divided Gull’s Point from the frowning mass of Stark Head.

Once or twice a question began to be asked, but each time Superintendent Battle held up a large hand rather like a cardboard ham, intimating that the time had not come yet. So the silence was unbroken save for the rushing of the water past them. Kay and Ted stood together looking down into the water. Nevile was slumped down, his legs stuck out. Mary Aldin and Thomas Royde sat up in the bows. And one and all glanced from time to time curiously at the tall aloof figure of MacWhirter by the stern. He looked at none of them, but stood with his back turned and his shoulders hunched up.

Not until they were under the frowning shadow of Stark Head did Battle throttle down the engine and begin to speak his piece. He spoke without self-consciousness and in a tone that was more reflective than anything else.

“This has been a very odd case—one of the oddest I’ve ever known, and I’d like to say something on the subject of murder generally. What I’m going to say is not original—actually I overheard young Mr. Daniels, the KC, say something of the kind, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d got it from someone else—he’s a trick of doing that!

“It’s this! When you read the account of a murder—or say, a fiction story based on murder, you usually begin with the murder itself. That’s all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. Mr. Royde is here from Malaya. Mr. MacWhirter is here because he wanted to revisit a spot where he once tried to commit suicide. The murder itself is the end of the story. It’s Zero Hour.”

He paused.

“It’s Zero Hour now.”

Five faces were turned to him—only five, for MacWhirter did not turn his head. Five puzzled faces.

Mary Aldin said:

“You mean that Lady Tressilian’s death was the culmination of a long train of circumstances?”

“No, Miss Aldin, not Lady Tressilian’s death. Lady Tressilian’s death was only incidental to the main object of the murderer. The murder I am talking of is the murder of Audrey Strange.”

He listened to the sharp indrawing of breath. He wondered if, suddenly, someone was afraid….

“This crime was planned quite a long time ago—probably as early as last winter. It was planned down to the smallest detail. It had one object, and one object only: that Audrey Strange should be hanged by the neck till she was dead….

“It was cunningly planned by someone who thought themselves very clever. Murderers are usually vain. There was first the superficial unsatisfactory evidence against Nevile Strange which we were meant to see through. But having been presented with one lot of faked evidence, it was not considered likely that we should consider a second edition of the same thing. And yet, if you come to look at it, all the evidence against Audrey Strange could be faked. The weapon taken from her fireplace, her gloves—the left-hand glove dipped in blood—hidden in the ivy outside her window. The powder she uses dusted on the inside of a coat collar, and a few hairs placed there too. Her own fingerprint, occurring quite naturally on a roll of adhesive plaster taken from her room. Even the left-handed nature of the blow.

“And there was the final damning evidence of Mrs. Strange herself—I don’t believe there’s one of you (except the one who knows) who can credit her innocence after the way she behaved when we took her into custody. Practically admitted her guilt, didn’t she? I mightn’t have believed in her being innocent myself if it hadn’t been for a private experience of my own…Struck me right between the eyes it did, when I saw and heard her—because, you see, I’d known another girl who did that very same thing, who admitted guilt when she wasn’t guilty—and Audrey Strange was looking at me with that other girl’s eyes….

“I’d got to do my duty. I knew that. We police officers have to act on evidence—not on what we feel and think. But I can tell you that at that minute I prayed for a miracle—because I didn’t see that anything but a miracle was going to help that poor lady.

“Well, I got my miracle. Got it right away!

“Mr. MacWhirter, here, turned up with his story.”

He paused.

“Mr. MacWhirter, will you repeat what you told me up at the house?”

MacWhirter turned. He spoke in short sharp sentences that carried conviction just because of their conciseness.

He told of his rescue from the cliff the preceding January and of his wish to revisit the scene. He went on:

“I went up there on Monday night. I stood there lost in my own thoughts. It must have been, I suppose, in the neighbourhood of eleven o’clock. I looked across at that house on the point—Gull’s Point, as I know it now to be.”

He paused and then went on.

“There was a rope hanging from a window of that house into the sea. I saw a man climbing up that rope….”

Just a moment elapsed before they took it in. Mary Aldin cried out:

“Then it was an outsider after all? It was nothing to do with any of us. It was an ordinary burglar!”

“Not quite so fast,” said Battle. “It was someone who came from the other side of the river, yes, since he swam across. But someone in the house had to have the rope ready for him, therefore someone inside must have been concerned.”

He went on slowly:

“And we know of someone who was on the other side of the river that night—someone who wasn’t seen between ten thirty and a quarter past eleven, and who might have been swimming over and back. Someone who might have had a friend on this side of the water.”

He added: “Eh, Mr. Latimer?”

Ted took a step backward. He cried out shrilly:

“But I can’t swim! Everybody knows I can’t swim. Kay, tell them I can’t swim.”

“Of course Ted can’t swim!” Kay said.

“Is that so?” asked Battle pleasantly.

He moved along the boat as Ted moved in the other direction. There was some clumsy movement and a splash.

“Dear me,” said Superintendent Battle in deep concern. “Mr. Latimer’s gone overboard.”

His hand closed like a vice on Nevile’s arm as the latter was preparing to jump in after him.

“No, no, Mr. Strange. No need for you to get yourself wet. There are two of my men handy—fishing in the dinghy there.” He peered over the side of the boat. “It’s quite true,” he said with interest. “He can’t swim. It’s all right. They’ve got him. I’ll apologize presently, but really there’s only one way to make sure that a person can’t swim and that’s to throw them in and watch. You see, Mr. Strange, I like to be thorough. I had to eliminate Mr. Latimer first. Mr. Royde here has got a groggy arm, he couldn’t do any rope climbing.”

Battle’s voice took on a purring quality.

“So that brings us to you, doesn’t it, Mr. Strange? A good athlete, a mountain climber, a swimmer and all that. You went over on the ten thirty ferry all right but no one can swear to seeing you at the Easterhead Hotel until a quarter past eleven in spite of your story of having been looking for Mr. Latimer then.”

Nevile jerked his arm away. He threw back his head and laughed.

“You suggest that I swam across the river and climbed up a rope—”

“Which you had left ready hanging from your window,” said Battle.

“Killed Lady Tressilian and swam back again? Why should I do such a fantastic thing? And who laid all those clues against me? I suppose I laid them against myself?”

“Exactly,” said Battle. “And not half a bad idea either.”

“And why should I want to kill Camilla Tressilian?”

“You didn’t,” sai

d Battle. “But you did want to hang the woman who left you for another man. You’re a bit unhinged mentally, you know. Have been ever since you were a child—I’ve looked up that old bow and arrow case, by the way. Anyone who does you an injury has to be punished—and death doesn’t seem to you an excessive penalty for them to pay. Death by itself wasn’t enough for Audrey—your Audrey whom you loved—oh, yes, you loved her all right before your love turned to hate. You had to think of some special kind of death, some long drawn out specialized death. And when you’d thought of it, the fact that it entailed the killing of a woman who had been something like a mother to you didn’t worry you in the least….”

Nevile said, and his voice was quite gentle:

“All lies! All lies! And I’m not mad. I’m not mad.”

Battle said contemptuously:

“Flicked you on the raw, didn’t she, when she went off and left you for another man? Hurt your vanity! To think she should walk out on you. You salved your pride by pretending to the world at large that you’d left her and you married another girl who was in love with you just to bolster up that belief. But underneath you planned what you’d do to Audrey. You couldn’t think of anything worse than this—to get her hanged. A fine idea—pity you hadn’t the brains to carry it out better!”

Nevile’s tweed-coated shoulders moved, a queer, wriggling movement.

Battle went on:

“Childish—all that niblick stuff! Those crude trails pointing to you! Audrey must have known what you were after! She must have laughed up her sleeve! Thinking I didn’t suspect you! You murderers are funny little fellows! So puffed up. Always thinking you’ve been clever and resourceful and really being quite pitifully childish….”

It was a strange queer scream that came from Nevile.

“It was a clever idea—it was. You’d never have guessed. Never! Not if it hadn’t been for this interfering jackanapes, this pompous Scotch fool. I’d thought out every detail—every detail! I can’t help what went wrong. How was I to know Royde knew the truth about Audrey and Adrian? Audrey and Adrian…Curse Audrey—she shall hang—you’ve got to hang her—I want her to die afraid—to die—to die…I hate her. I tell you I want her to die….”